Induction Cooktop

Quicker cooking is great. Less-wasteful, safer and better cooking is great.

Cooking that's easier to clean up after is, we dare say, greater.

If the main purpose of your cooktop is to get dinner on the table faster and do it safer, it goes without saying that a quicker, less-intensive cleanup would be a big draw. Since an induction cooktop seldom gets very hot, food doesn't burn onto it. 

The stove top is easily one of the most dangerous places in the kitchen. It's where grease fires begin, where the gas gets left on, and where little hands make contact with very hot surfaces.

First, the most obvious: No flame means no grease fires, and no gas means no gas leaks.

One of the biggest selling points of the induction cooktop is speed. It simply takes less time to cook food because the pan heats up quicker. That's because while both gas and electric cooktops use a middleman to transfer heat to the pan -- flames and an electric burner, respectively -- an induction cooktop generates heat directly in the pan.

For people who love to cook -- or at least love to eat great home-cooked food -- control is probably the most important feature of a cooktop. It's why many serious cooks prefer gas to electric: Gas burners are more responsive when you adjust the dial. The temperature change is fast.

​It's pretty easy to see why induction cooking would be more efficient than gas and electric if you think about the heating processes involved. A gas flame is going to release lots of heat around the pan, and an electric burner emits radiant heat at any point where it's not in direct, firm contact with the pan. When heat is generated within the pan itself, as with induction, more of that heat gets to the food, and less of it warms up your kitchen.